Ephesians 5:22-33 | Submitting to god’s Design
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Ephesians 5: 21-33 (NIV)
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Point 1 | Spirit-Led Submission Begins with Mutual Humility
Genesis 2: 20-24 ( NIV)
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Colossians 3:19 ( NIV)
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.“When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.”
“His love motivates her respect; her respect motivates his love.” -Emerson Eggerichs
Philippians 2:3-4 ( NIV)
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
Point 2 | Her response is Respect
Point 3 | His leadership is love
Point 4 | Their Oneness is a Witness
When there is Spirit-led submission, partnered with respect and sacrificial love. The unity of a husband and wife becomes a witness of Christ
Submission → Respect → Love → Witness
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It's good to see you guys good.
You awake?
Amen.
Well, lots of exciting things going on at the church.
I hope you guys get connected with all that.
I know I'm excited to see the kids' Christmas production with NextGen.
If you want to become a small group leader, man, please register for that.
It's going to be awesome and amazing time.
We're going to continue on in the series out of the book of Ephesians, Spirit-Filled Life.
And today we're going to be in chapter 5, second half of chapter 5, as Brandon kicked us off on chapter 5.
I want you all to know...
We're almost done with the book of Ephesians.
Summer's almost over.
That means there's still time.
If you have been disobedient and haven't read the book of Ephesians yet and done your homework, you still have time to turn in your assignment and read through it.
In all honesty, I really do pray that you read through the Bible as we're teaching through this, just because God will speak to you in your quiet time.
He'll speak to you as you are spending time going verse by verse, and we want to encourage you with that.
I'm just going to open this up in prayer, and then we're going to dive into the text.
Is that all right?
Lord, we thank you, God, for this day and giving us another day.
God, I thank you that we get to worship together as a church freely, God, exalting your name.
And Jesus, right now, I just ask that you would captivate, God, any of our minds that are wandering away, that are thinking about anything else right now, Lord, except you.
And God, I pray that as we go through and we dive through your word today, God, that it would be edifying, God.
It would be useful, God.
It would teach us and mature us and grow us and expand our minds of revelation of things we did not know that was in there today, Lord.
that you would help us, and that, God, I pray that you would remove any distractions, any hindrances, anything, God, that would stop the seeds of the living word from being deposited and planted in our lives, Lord.
We thank you that everyone here is here because you wanted them to be here.
Everyone watching online is watching online because you ordained it, God.
And so I pray that you would have your way.
In Jesus' name, everyone said amen.
Ephesians 5, chapter 5, starting in verse 21, says this.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
I can stop right there and we can go home.
Submit to one another, because I lost half the room when I said the word submit.
Submit to one another.
I'm gonna say it a few more times.
It's like exposure therapy.
Submit, submit.
Yeah, you gotta submit.
I have to submit, we have to submit.
The Bible says to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Not their holiness, not their authority, out of reverence for Christ.
Keep the amens coming.
Verse 22.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any blemish, but holy and blameless.
In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
Verse 29, after all, no one has ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church.
For we are members of his body.
For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Title of this message is Submitting to God's Design.
submitting to God's design.
You know, this past week has been a very busy week in the Alexander household, and I've been reminded throughout the entirety of the week about God's design in the different people in my home, and God's design in how he created.
And it started with Chelsea on Tuesday.
I was reminded on Tuesday, it's the fourth time now that I've experienced this, but as Chelsea was giving birth to our fourth child, I'm being reminded that
That God has designed her body to be able to have a child.
That God designed her body differently than me.
I'm there supporting my wife.
I'm doing everything I can, but I'm like, Lord, I cannot do what she is doing right now.
You know why?
Because he didn't design it that way.
He didn't design for me to go through what she was going through, but he did design her and her body to know what it is doing and how to respond to the act of giving birth.
And then after that happened on Tuesday and we got to welcome, we have a picture, we
Our beautiful, I'm a girl dad.
I'm in my girl dad mode.
Right, Maya?
Maya's been praying for a girl since who knows when.
It's different.
Sometimes I'm gonna slip, but I've been correcting Chelsea, actually.
Sometimes she'll say his or him.
I'm like, it's a girl.
Remember, we got a girl now.
We got a girl, we got a girl.
It's so different for us.
But Aunt Mariah, when I look at her,
When I hold her, I'm reminded of God's design in her life right now.
And right now, as an infant, as a newborn, thank you, sir, she is designed to do about three things.
To eat, to sleep, and to poop.
And it's a miracle at seeing the design because just minutes, minutes of her being out of the womb, she is already trying to find where she can get some nourishment.
It shows the design that God put inside of a newborn baby that can't talk, that can't ask for anything, but just instinctually, the design is showing that, hey, I need to connect and latch onto mom so I can have nourishment.
It's God's design.
And then I was reminded of the design of my three boys because, see, we had a couple of days of peace and quiet, but then they came back.
And I was reminded that their design is to bring noise, is to bring chaos, destruction, calamity.
I mean, it took them five minutes to destroy the entire house.
It took them five minutes to pull out all of their toys, to destroy our bed.
Meanwhile, they're doing all that while just adorning their little baby sister as they give her a hug and they give her a kiss.
And then they go right back to their design nature of destroying the house.
And then there's me in the picture of all of this.
And can I tell you, my design came to the surface was just, Lord, you gotta help me.
You gotta help me to serve and take care of and love my wife.
You gotta help me because being a dad to a girl, I'm like, Lord, you already know you gotta help me.
And then there's them.
And that's self-explanatory.
But I was reminded of...
My design to need just to call out to God and to say, God, you have to help me.
See, when Amariah was born, and this can sometimes be a normal thing, but sometimes it takes babies a little bit of time to start breathing on their own.
Sometimes they need a little help.
And we experienced that with Asa.
It was about seven seconds.
It was the longest seven seconds of my life when he was born and he wasn't breathing.
I was freaking out.
I was, and then he started breathing.
I was like, oh, it's okay.
Okay.
Well, Amariah, she's already showing us that she does everything differently than our boys and does everything her own way.
And so when she was born, there was about a minute and a half that she wasn't breathing.
Now, her heart was beating.
We knew that.
But her lungs were, she didn't cough it up yet.
Her lungs were not functioning on their own.
And in that moment of I'm holding Chelsea, I'm looking at Amariah, the only thing I'm doing for a minute and a half is I'm just praying in tongues.
And she asked me last night on the couch, she's like, hey, were you worried or freaked out during that moment?
I said, you know, I was for Asa.
I really wasn't.
I was just trusting God's design.
And I knew that my design in the time of trouble or when something is bigger than me or when I don't know what to do, I just call out to him.
So submitting to God's design is what we're talking about today.
Now, I wanna just say that we are talking about
A topic that is particularly about marriage.
And for some of you who aren't married or don't want to be married or you're like, it's complicated and you don't want to talk about it either way.
I want you to lean in because I need you to understand this, that the Bible is for you, even though not everything in it is speaking to your situation.
Like the Bible is for you, but it wasn't written to you, right?
There was a context.
There was an audience.
There's people that it was written to, but it is for you.
And so if you're married, this message is for you and this text is for you.
If you desire to be married, this text is for you.
If you are single and satisfied and say, Pastor, I'm all good, can I tell you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, one of the ways you worship God is you want to be a student and study the word of God.
So it's important that you know what it says about the topic because as you are an ambassador for Christ, you can talk to a world who is not following the scripture and you can speak life into that situation.
So this is for...
everyone.
Everyone, not just for the married folks.
And I want to give a couple of disclaimers before we dive deeper into the message.
And the first one is this.
I am not the author of this text, okay?
I didn't write this.
I am just reading it and teaching it.
So put your pistols away, all right?
Like I'm just, I didn't write this.
You ain't got to come for me, okay?
You can talk to the apostle Paul when you get to heaven.
Make sure you get to heaven so you can talk to him about it.
I'm not the author.
I'm just reading it and teaching it.
I will never know, nor will I ever pretend to know what it's like to be a wife.
It's my disclaimer.
I don't know what it's like to be a wife.
I'm not going to speak on behalf of being a wife because I don't have that context or lived experience.
But I am going to speak a little bit about what my wife has told me.
Thirdly, culture is constantly trying to redefine God's design, and as a pastor and as a believer, I'm not gonna have that.
And fourthly, all complaints, critiques, criticisms, you can go ahead and email them to deandee at rlcsac.com.
I will be out on paternity leave next week.
In all fairness...
I do wanna acknowledge and understand that there are many, many who are listening today who you have experienced brokenness when it comes to this issue.
You've experienced brokenness when it comes to this topic of marriage and how the roles and functions of marriage should work out or play out and how God deemed it to be.
And I wanna help us to press past that while our experiences are real, they're valid, and they have a place in our life, let's not allow our experiences to hinder us from hearing what the word of God says that is living and true and will not fade away.
So if you have a negative experience, I can empathize with you, but I'm gonna ask you to let's allow the scripture to give us a new experience that's better than the earthly experience that we have.
And the good news of the grace of Jesus Christ, that though your situation might be complicated, messy, brokenness,
Calamity, the gospel always brings us hope.
It doesn't leave us feeling hopeless.
The Bible and the word of God should always push us towards hope.
Now sometimes we are confronted with things, but that does not mean we are void of hope.
And that confrontation that comes from scripture at times, it can do two things.
We have two responses.
Number one is we can choose to get offended when we are confronted.
Or we can allow the confrontation from scripture to mature us and cause us to grow.
but there will be confrontation if you read the Bible.
It will speak to you and make you a little upset.
And then you have a choice to choose.
Will I be offended or will I allow it to grow me?
I want to give us some historical context.
The Apostle Paul is, I know we have chapters and verses, but it was really just a letter.
Like in our Bibles, we see chapters and verses and we see subtitles and all these things, but
I don't want you to imagine all of that.
This is a letter that he is writing to the church in Ephesus.
And I know we see chapter five and then we think chapter six is a completely different thing.
But the verses that we're covering today are actually sandwiched as one piece of the first part of chapter six, which Pastor Dean will talk about next week.
But I'm just gonna be talking about the first part.
And he gives three examples to show us how we as believers are to submit to Christ and how we are to understand our role and function to Christ.
He gives the example of wives to husbands, which we will talk about.
Then he goes on to give the examples of children obeying their parents.
And then he goes on to talking about how slaves should operate under their master.
So there's three things here
We are just gonna focus on the wives and their husbands.
And I just wanna put this caveat out there.
I've never heard anyone ever push back on children obeying their parents, but I have heard a lot of people wanna push back on wives submitting to their husbands.
And so I wanna press us in to not cherry pick scriptures of what we like and what we don't like, but to truly look at the text and say, God, what is this saying?
What does this mean?
And how do I apply it to my life?
I want you to also notice, though, as you read, because you're going to read the Bible for yourself, and you're going to read Ephesians 5, 21 through 33, and chapter 6, what you're going to see is that when he's talking about the relationship between wives and husbands, the word is to submit.
When he's talking about children and their parents and slaves and their masters, the word is to obey, showing us that there is a higher level of equality that husbands and wives have, that it's submission and not obey.
Okay?
You need to pay attention to that and make sure you note that as you're studying it.
So my first point, excuse me, in this message is that spirit-led submission begins with mutual humility.
Spirit-led submission begins with mutual humility.
Verse 21 says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
And let me just say, this was not written, verse 21 is not an appetizer to butter you up and soften you up for what verse 22 says.
And we also know that scripture can't cancel out or contradict scripture.
So verse 21 is laying a foundation for all believers that we are called to be people who submit.
Come on, look to your neighbor and just say, just submit.
Some of y'all didn't want to receive that.
Everyone is called to submit.
Everyone is to submit to one another.
Throughout the scripture, we see this theme of us not caring about ourselves more than we care about other people.
That we're not selfish, that we're not envious, that we're not coveting, that we're not just saying it's all about me, me, me, me, me, me.
No, the scripture teaches us that we should submit one to another.
We ought to value others more.
above ourselves, that we are to walk with humility, that we are to think about things in the mode of what are the needs of other people, not just what are my wants today.
And so when we submit to one another, what we're doing is we're continuously breaking off that fleshly temptation of pride.
When you practice submission, it gets easier and easier and easier.
When it's been a long time since you've had to submit to anything or anyone, man, that first time, it is soul crushing.
Because you are dying to yourself.
As Jesus would teach us, we are called.
We have to submit our old ways and go into the new ways that Christ has for us.
So why do we submit?
We submit because when we are submissive people, we have a witness that the world can see.
Amen.
When we are submitting to Christ, we have a witness that others can see.
You're going through this life difficulty.
You're going through this hard situation.
Why do you still place your faith in Jesus?
It's because you're like, oh, I'm submitted to him.
I'm surrendered.
Why do we submit to Jesus?
Because Jesus was holy, matchless.
He came in and he lived a life that you and I could not live.
And he died on the cross for you and I. Why do we submit to Jesus?
Because Jesus is worthy to be submitted to.
He's worthy to be submitted to.
That's why we get this whole idea of submission in our lives, and we have to live it out.
We have to walk it out, and we have to be those who are willing to submit.
Philippians 2, verse three through four.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.
Rather, in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others.
We gotta submit.
We gotta put people before ourselves, and we have to say, Lord, I want to be a person who walks in humility with other people, that I'm not so stubborn in my ways that it's all about me, myself, and I, but that I care and I consider other people.
The second point that I wanna get to today is I wanna talk about the wives' response here that we see in verse 22 through 24 and then verse 23, which I'm gonna touch on a little bit as well.
And her response is respect.
The wives' response is respect.
The Bible says, wives, submit to yourselves, to your own husbands as you do the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
I want you to hear that language today.
The husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, which he is the Savior, okay?
Wives, submit to your own husbands, okay?
You submit to your husband.
This does not say women, you submit to men.
Come on, ladies, that was a spot to say amen.
But it is saying, come on, ladies, you gotta give me an amen when I can get it, because you see the verses I gotta teach.
You see the verses I gotta teach, okay?
Wives submit to your own husbands, not women submit to men.
But if you are a wife, let me tell you something.
If you cannot submit to God, you have no chance of submitting to a husband.
If you struggle submitting to God, there's no chance you're going to submit to a husband.
And if you are the type who is married and say, I ain't got to submit to nobody.
I only listen to God and the Holy Spirit.
Can I tell you, you're wrong.
you're off, and the Bible would teach otherwise.
If you are a married woman, the text is saying what the text is saying.
I think it's also important to note and understand what this word is saying.
And the Greek word for this submitting to your own husband, it's really, there's two forms of it.
There's a military form where it's saying that to arrange the troops, to gather the troops, to follow under the command of a leader.
But there's also a non-military tense to it, which is speaking to voluntarily submit.
having an attitude that says, I am giving in, I am cooperating, and I am coming under the responsibility to carry the burden of the husband.
Now know this, husbands.
It does not say, husbands, make your wives obey.
That's gross and not biblical.
And that's not what the Bible says.
This is not a forced submission.
This is a willful submission.
Wife choosing under her own power to say, I am making the choice to honor Christ as the head by honoring my husband as the head of our family.
She is not forced into that position.
She is being obedient to God and she is choosing to say, I am going to operate in that position.
I am going to operate in that function.
See, I knew the amens would stop.
Just as believers, do you know,
God doesn't force us to submit to him.
It's an active choice we have to make.
It's the same for wives.
Because we've all had, I remember I was at a youth camp when I was a little, little kid and I asked the speaker, I said, if God knew we were gonna sin, why didn't he just stop us?
He's all powerful.
And he looked back at me, he said, because he didn't create robots.
He's like, he gave us free will.
So wives, you do have free will.
You don't have to follow the scripture and you don't have to follow what God is teaching us.
But it does say that we are to properly walk in our functions, in our roles, just as we all have to submit to the lordship of Christ.
It doesn't say, this is going to help somebody out.
Somebody is going to, I'm telling you, if you could get this, you're going to save yourselves from 15 to 18 years worth of trouble in your life.
It does not say girlfriends submit to your bum boyfriends.
It doesn't say it.
There's nowhere in the scripture where it says you should submit to your boyfriend as he is the head over your relationship.
No, ladies, if he has not entered into a covenant with you, then there is no responsibility that you have to submit under him.
And fellas, for you, you have no rights if you have not stepped before God and her and the witnesses there to request or to expect her to while y'all are not under covenant with God.
But if you do choose to get married, then you are choosing to follow the functions and the roles that God has laid out through scripture.
If you struggle with submission, which a lot of people do, can I just invite you to do this?
To spend time with God and say, Lord,
Why is this so hard for me?
Why is just him reading this making me feel like I want to go fight this dude?
When a wife is submitted to her husband, she is respecting and reflecting the order of the kingdom of God.
When a wife...
It's submitted to her husband.
She's respecting and reflecting.
Rudy, that clock is moving too fast.
Can you slow it down for me?
The order of the kingdom of God.
Now, just that statement alone, please hear me.
If you are a woman in here or a wife, if that statement triggers something in you,
Like, not me.
I ain't the one.
That's not how we get down.
I wasn't raised that way.
Can I just say first and foremost, I was raised by a single mom.
And so I saw the negative effects of the brokenness that comes from not doing it God's way.
And I saw the weight and the turmoil and the struggle and all the things that it caused my mom.
And quite honestly, I saw the bitterness it put in her heart towards men.
Not me, because I'm her precious little boy.
But every other man is like, you're going to get the business if you even come over here.
That's not what God has for you, though.
That's what the world has for you, but that's not what God has for you.
And so if this statement is triggering, can I just invite you to just say, Lord, is there some residue?
Because maybe you've been hurt.
Maybe you've been under abusive leadership.
Maybe you've been in an abusive relationship.
Maybe you've seen the brokenness of how your parents' marriage was.
Please do not allow those negative experiences to rob you from God's kingdom order in your life.
You might have a lack of trust of men for a good reason, but that does not mean that the scripture is any less true.
That's why I say we can't ever change your experience, but we can always be introduced to a new experience that would cause us to have to wrestle with our former.
I wanna also just get this out the way.
Whoever said submission was bad?
Whoever labeled submission with a negative stigma, was it God or was it culture?
Because I've never read anywhere in the Bible where it says that submission was a negative thing, but I do see it all throughout Scripture about how we honor in our obedience.
Jesus said, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments.
That's not a negative thing, it's a positive thing.
And so we have to not allow mainstream cultural thoughts to steep into our Christian worldview and how we interpret Scripture.
Because it's not in there that it is a negative thing.
Who said it's weak to be submissive?
No, it's safe to be submissive.
It's honoring to be submissive.
It's orderly to be submissive.
Not just wives to their husbands, but everybody submitting to the authority of Christ.
And let me say also, a wife submitted to her husband doesn't mean that she doesn't have a voice.
It doesn't mean she's not valued.
It does not mean that she is not made one with her husband.
It simply means she's accepting that her husband is the head over the family as Christ is the head over church.
That's what it means.
And wives, you cannot be a believer in the headship of Christ if you are not a believer in the headship of your husband.
Jesus, I mean, the text, it's living inspired.
As the apostle Paul writes it, it says it clear as day.
The husband is ahead of his wife as Christ is ahead of the, you can't separate that sentence and say, oh no, that's not what that means.
This should not make you, if you're a woman in here, you're a wife, or maybe you've been divorced, this should not make you get upset or frustrated or thinking like, oh, this is just trying to put me down as a wife or as a woman.
What this should cause a response in, and I know that some people, you're like, ah, didn't do that, wish I did.
What this should cause a response, in ladies specifically, is you get real picky and real discerning about who you choose to marry and who you choose to have kids with.
I'm saying that
knowing and as a byproduct of a home that was not that.
And so I know there are many, you're like, man, yeah, pastor, I wish I knew that 10 years ago or 15 years ago.
Again, that's where I say the grace of God can do mighty, mighty works in your life.
And though the design of God didn't always go the way that it was supposed to go, our God is a redeeming God.
And so we do have a hope, we do have a faith.
And along with that hope, there is sometimes consequences to our life decisions that we've made.
And this is why, I mean,
Pastor Jesse, Pastor Isaiah and I, we are like the three headhunters on relationships around here and in the office because we got no problem breaking something up that I know in 10 years is gonna be a big issue.
We got no problem with it.
I'm trying to save you from a lifetime of harm, of hurt, because now you got multiple kids with this person, and now you are tied to them, and you're just like, what in the world was I thinking?
So this should not cause us to be upset.
This should cause us to be picky.
I tell people about to get married, this is the time to be as picky and as choosy as you possibly can.
And discerning, and ladies on that list, you know, because I know ladies got their list of all the things you're looking for, right?
He got to be taller than you when you got heels on.
He got to have a certain amount of money in his bank account.
He needs to not live with his mom.
Can I also add this?
You need to ask yourself when you're dating that man, you need to ask yourself this.
Can I submit to his leadership?
And if you can't, then he ain't the one for you.
Because that is what a wife's role will require of you when you transition from girlfriend to wife.
Genesis 2, 20 through 24 says, but for Adam, no suitable helper was found.
So the Lord God caused the man to fall asleep in a deep sleep.
And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed it up from the place with flesh.
Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib.
He had taken out of the man and he had brought her to the man.
And the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman for she was taken out of me.
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh.
Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
I need you to hear that.
This is not a conversation of text that is disputing the value that women have.
We are not saying women have a lesser value.
We are saying about the roles and functions that wives have in a marriage and husbands have in a marriage.
So we can see already that the Bible is not teaching that women are less than.
Adam is saying, no, you are bone of my bone.
You are flesh of my flesh.
You are one with me.
I leave my family and I become one, united with you.
And so there is...
this is nothing to say that's putting down.
That's what our culture would try to say, that if you would stand on a biblical principle, if you were to say in the public square, if you were to say on social media, wives should submit to their husbands, people would be trying to cancel Pastor James so quick.
They'd be hot.
They'd be upset.
They'd be frustrated.
But it's not about value.
We're talking about order within a marriage.
And like I said, everyone has to submit.
Verse 24, what does he say?
Now as the church submits to Christ.
You cannot be a godly person if you are not a submitted person.
It's impossible, it's impossible.
You can't be a godly person without being a submitted person.
Submission comes with the package of salvation.
And there are moments, there are times, there are things, there are people that are really gonna test our ability or desire to want to submit.
I say that her response is respect because verse 33 gives us this phrase that the wife must respect her husband.
I was doing a little word study on that, and that word respect is the Greek word phobeo.
It's where we get phobia, fear, fear of, be afraid of.
And you might be thinking, wait a minute, the wife should be afraid of her husband?
No, that's not what it's saying.
93 times the Bible uses this word phobeo.
Only one time is it meaning the definition of reverence, and it's in Ephesians 5 verse 33.
So what the text is saying is that her response should be respect.
Wives should have reverence for their husbands.
And ladies, if you married the right one, you should have reverence for your husband.
It shouldn't be a negative thing.
You should be glad and grateful that you married a man of God that you can look at and say, man, I love that he leads me and follows the way of God as he's being led by Christ.
Right?
So what if your husband is a bum?
What if he's a bum?
because I know where some of y'all were going.
But pastor, if you know who I was married to, you can still respect and submit to your husband.
That's a complete sentence, even if he's a bum.
Because in fact, your honoring of doing your role and what God called you to do can open up the favor of God and the blessing of God so that now God is dealing with him so that God can bring him into his role and his assignment of what he is supposed to do.
Now hear me, does that mean you submit to doing things that are sinful?
Absolutely not.
You do not follow someone who's trying to lead you to do things that goes against the will of God or the heart of God.
So if a husband is trying to lead you into sin, you do not follow him because you do not follow after something that would lead you away from Christ.
The text is not saying or condoning, even though some might have abused it as this in the past, it is not condoning or using the acceptance of abuse.
If you are in an abusive relationship, you do not submit to that.
You get out of that.
If you are in an abusive relationship where you are not being treated as what the Bible should say a wife should be treated, and it says that husbands should lay down their lives as Christ laid down his for the church, you do not submit to abuse of any kind.
That is not what the text is saying.
It is saying that you would submit to a man who is submitted under Christ.
Now, we have to be careful.
Just because by your definition he's a bum, that doesn't mean that's how God is seeing him.
So let's just say hypothetically, man, I wish I had more time, Pastor Jesse.
Let's say hypothetically you have a lazy husband who makes some poor decisions at times.
He's not sinning against God.
They're just poor decisions.
And they're poor decision-wise because they're not your decisions.
You have a choice.
You have a choice.
You have a choice.
Chelsea texted me, said, I'm gonna watch the second service.
I said, okay, go ahead, go ahead.
You have a choice to let those moments be, am I gonna choose to go rogue in this moment because I disagree with him, or am I gonna choose to stay surrendered to what God has placed my role and function in the marriage and trust God?
Because it does come down to trusting God that he will honor your faith as you are honoring him.
I like to say it this way, God can deal with your husband, and he will, or if you step out of your function, now God has to deal with your husband and you.
So if a wife is gonna submit to God's design, she will have to submit to her husband.
I asked my wife about this, because I know some of y'all think now, yeah, he up here saying all that, but what's his wife think?
I asked her a couple of weeks ago, knowing that this was coming up, and we just had a conversation about it.
And I was real, I said, I don't want to contextualize anything you say.
I just want to hear what you think.
And in short, that conversation essentially just went, she said, you know, there are times where I'm going to disagree with the decision that you feel like we need to make.
But I trust that you are the leader and the husband that God has for me, and so I will follow in that decision.
But can I tell you, husbands, and I talked to Pastor Isaiah about this.
I'm glad he echoed the same thing.
That is not a license for you to play the, hey, wife, you should submit card to me every other week.
Because if you're actually walking in unity, because if you are truly aligned and if you're following after Christ and they're following after Christ, you're normally nine times out of 10 walking in the same direction.
And it is rare and seldom that a husband might say, actually, we need to turn this way and I know it's gonna be hard and I wanna be considerate and I wanna listen and we need to have a conversation, but I still, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be responsible for this so I feel like we need to move in this direction.
But that is not a license to say, hey, it's a Tuesday.
Where my sandwich at or whatever.
That's not what this is.
That's not what this is.
And let me just say this, women.
Man, I wish we had more time, Pastor Jesse.
Because I got to give it to the men.
She's like, please, get to the men.
Hurry up, come on.
I want to say this about women.
Just so you know, if you don't understand or know about other world religions or...
Christianity has always been the safest place for women.
Christianity has always been a faith that has empowered women, that has given way for women to have roles and leadership and influence.
And so when we're talking about this, please do not hear whatever rhetoric is out there on YouTube or TikTok that would say that Christianity tries to demean and put women down.
No, Christianity is the only faith where women actually have a voice, where women have a say, where women are one with their husbands.
And so this has nothing to do with value.
Okay.
His leadership.
I got to blitz them in.
Oh my goodness.
Here we go.
His leadership is love.
Fellas, your leadership has to be loved.
And let me just say this.
Submitted people are easier to submit to.
Husbands.
Come on, ladies.
That's where I get another amen.
Ladies, you got to help me out.
I can't get a lot of them.
You got to break the silence in here.
No.
But in all honesty, husbands, submitted people are easier to submit to.
As she sees that you are submitted to Christ, she will be more gladly and willing to be submitted to you.
If she sees that you live a life that is going against that, why would she?
So husbands, don't make your wife out to be a fool by following you.
Don't make her out to be a fool.
Don't hang her out to get blindsided by your foolishness and how you're leading your home or your kids or her.
But instead, you are to lead with love.
Throughout the Bible, in the New Testament, three to four verses, three to four speak to women submitting to their husbands.
Eight to nine speak to husbands loving their wife the way that Christ loved, sacrificial love, respecting her, laying down your life for her.
John says there's no greater love, as Jesus would say in the Gospel of John, there's no greater love than laying down one's life for a friend.
Well, then husbands, I love friends, but I love my wife a whole lot more.
So that means I need to lay down my life for her just as Christ died for the church.
And husbands, don't define the way you love your wife based on how you define love because that's not what the Bible says.
Because you're trying to love your wife the way you saw it in your broken upbringing and childhood.
And that's not how you're supposed to love her.
You're supposed to love her with the modeling that Christ gave us.
And the modeling that Christ gave us
was humble, was compassionate, was clear, but had empathy, was sacrificial, was willing to take on pain that other people should have bore.
Colossians 3.19, husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
The foundation of a husband is to be one who gives himself up for his wife.
One who will give up his life for her.
One that will give up his desires for her.
One who will give up his needs and say, no, I'm gonna put her needs first.
This word love that we see throughout Ephesians is the agape love.
Now I know in English we have one word, it's love, but in the Greek there's really four of them and they all have different meanings.
Agape love always speaks to the love of God that God has for us, the love that is sacrificial, the love that is selfless, the love that is willing to give and die on the cross.
That was agape love.
And the text actually uses the verb tense of it, meaning it's an active thing.
So you can't just say you love her.
You gotta show her.
Then there's storge love.
This is a love like a family love, as a parent loves their kids and the siblings love each other.
There's a phileo love, which is a brotherly love.
It's like when Christians say, I love you, and you're like, you don't even know me.
They're saying that because it's a phileo love.
It's I love that you are an image bearer of Christ, and because of that, I love you.
Then there's an eros love.
This is a romantic love, passionate, physical intimacy, physical attraction type love.
Can I tell you fellas what the Bible says?
When it says that you love your wife, it says you agape your wife, not eros your wife.
Because some of you, the only way you want to show love to your wife is through eros love.
physical touch, physical intimacy, physical attraction.
But Jesus is calling you to agape love, to be sacrificial, to be one who will give up your life for her.
If you are going to be a husband as a man of God who is a head over your house and over your wife, can I tell you, you need to be prepared to answer questions.
Because in Genesis, when Eve was in the garden,
and the serpent was getting all up in Adam's wife's ear, where was he at?
That's what I like to know.
And when she ate the fruit, and then she gave it to him, and he didn't check, hey, what fruit is this that you're giving me?
No, he ate it.
And Eve was deceived, but God came in, and he didn't ask where Eve was.
He asked, where are you, Adam, and who told you that you were naked?
See, God was
was modeling his design for us that Adam was responsible for what took place.
It was Adam's lack of leadership and paying attention that allowed for it to happen in the first place.
So husbands, you don't have the excuse to be like, man, what did Adam say?
It was the woman you gave me, Lord.
No, it didn't work out for him, did it?
God says, no, from now on, the ground's gonna be cursed.
You'll work it until the day that you die.
You'll deal with thorns and thistles.
And so husbands,
You got to lead your wife in the way that Christ loved the church.
You got to operate in the mantle and the function that God has called you to.
Adam made the mistake in the garden that he put his wife's voice over God's voice by saying, oh, well, yeah, we should eat this.
But God had already told him you should not eat that.
So if you're going to continue to lead, I love how 1 Peter says it.
Husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of gracious gift of life so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
Husbands, please hear me.
When you don't love your wife right, your prayers don't get heard by God.
Like some of y'all don't have a job yet.
Because you've been praying about it, but you don't treat your wife right yet, so God can't receive and hear your prayers.
There is a lid on your prayer life, husbands, when you don't treat your wife as the gift that she is.
It doesn't say that, wives, if you don't submit, your prayers don't get heard.
Wives, your prayers can still get heard, even though you're in disobedience.
But husbands, if you don't love her right, God don't want to hear from you.
God's not hearing your prayers.
Your prayer life is hindered.
And for some of you husbands, I'm going to kick you in the teeth, I'm sorry.
But for some of you husbands, the reason why that doesn't even offend you, what I just said, is because you don't even have a prayer life to begin with.
So you're not upset that God doesn't hear your prayers.
So why should she follow your leadership if there is none?
Why?
Like we have to, it takes every part saying, God, I need to play my role.
Let me not just get focused on her or him.
No, I need to play my role and be responsible to my role and my function.
I asked Pastor Isaiah about this and I love what he said.
He said in 15 years of marriage, Andrea and I have probably dealt with this topic for five minutes because we're, he said this, I'm gonna read what he said.
He said, it shouldn't be an issue when a woman of God is married to a praying and Bible reading man leading them.
And then he said, there are times when my praying and Bible reading wife says something and I trust what she has to say.
We see that her response is respect.
We see that his response is leadership through love.
My final point is this, their oneness is a witness.
Their oneness.
Verse 31 through 33 talks about
How the two of them are coming together to be one.
The most profound thing about marriage, the most beautiful thing I think about marriage is when you see two becoming one.
I was just recently at a wedding.
It was Trey and Noemi's wedding.
Trey is one of our board members.
He's actually right here.
Look at that husband right there.
That man of God is here.
And we were at their wedding, and we already joked about this in the hallway, so he don't know I was going to say any of this, but here we go.
It was hilarious because him and Noemi were giving their vows, and I mean, it was so undeniable as they're sharing their vows.
And let me say, they had booklets up there, okay?
They were like, it made all the married people in the room feel convicted.
Like, man, I love my wife too, but the brother is putting them vows out there.
It was beautiful.
Everyone, people are tearing up, they're crying, because it was so undeniable that we could see the two of them actively in front of our eyes, the two of them becoming one, one flesh with one witness, one body together.
And it was a beautiful picture to see, and this is what we see throughout Scripture of what we are in Christ, but also what we are in marriage.
God wants our marriages and our relationship to be a witness to other people.
So I have a little bit of an order here real quick.
It's submission leads to respect, leads to love, leads to a witness.
This is for everybody.
This is not just in marriages.
This is for every believer.
Salvation, man, you get kicked in the teeth with submission.
Wait a minute, I gotta submit to God's ways and not my ways?
Then we learn about respecting and having reverence for the things of God.
We learn to have reverence for his ways.
Then we encounter a deeper sense of this agape love that is sacrificial, that is selfless, that is giving up to others, which leads to us having a holy witness to other people.
Do you know that your marriage can just be a witness and bring healing to other people because they never saw that modeled by their parents?
Like husbands, you can be a hero to somebody else because they see how you treat your wife.
In fact, this just happened in the office.
I was just thinking about this.
Rudy, who's our tech and creative director, we were in office talking, and Pastor Isaiah was just being Pastor Isaiah.
Casual conversation.
And out of that casual conversation, he's talking about how much he loves and cares for his wife.
And Rudy literally said to some of the other single girls in there, she said...
Girls, that's what I want.
I want a man who will talk that way about me after he's been married to me for 15 years.
Come on, she's saying amen in the back.
Because there is a witness that comes from how we are living and operating in our lives.
I'm over time.
And we've begun by talking about God's design for marriage and family.
And I want to take us back to this design.
And I want to just acknowledge the fact the reality is there are times where we've stepped out of God's design.
And maybe that's you today.
But can I encourage you?
Just because you stepped out of God's design does not mean God has abandoned you.
And it does not mean God cannot redeem things in your life.
Whether it be a broken relationship, whether it be you have it.
God can still do a great work.
I'm gonna ask for you to all stand with me.
I'm gonna pray for us for one thing, because there's a question I think we need to ask.
Will I choose today to submit to God's will?
Our prayer team and prayer ministers are gonna be up here, but this is all I'm gonna do for dismissing.
I'm just gonna pray that God would help all of us.
Please hear me.
I'm gonna pray that God would help all of us submit to him.
And if we can all learn to submit to God, wives submitting to your husband is going to be a whole lot easier.
Husbands loving your wives the way God wants you to love your wife is going to be a whole lot easier.
It all starts and stems from this idea that we have to first submit to God.
So Father, we thank you for this day.
Jesus, thank you for being such a beautiful example for us.
Thank you for walking in power and humility at the exact same time.
And Lord, I just pray for each and every one of us that you would carve out the places in our heart, God, that are prideful, that are self-serving, and that you would replace that, God, with a heart that is willing and able to surrender and to submit to your ways, God.
As Isaiah would say in Isaiah 55, God, your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not our thoughts.
So Lord, I pray that you would help us, oh God, to be people who are surrendered and
and who are submitted to your lordship, and that through that submission, God, the kingdom design, the God's design and order in relationships and marriage and our relationships with our kids, God, would flow beautifully.
So I pray that you would help us this week, that you would remind us of your word, God, and that you would continue to speak to us.
In Jesus' name, and everyone said amen.
Come on, can we give God praise, amen?